Mr. Lincoln warmly pressed her hand as she disappeared through the door leading into Major Hay"s room, and turned to meet the Great Commoner who hobbled slowly in, leaning on his crooked cane.
At this moment he was a startling and portentous figure in the drama of the Nation, the most powerful parliamentary leader in American history, not excepting Henry Clay.
No stranger ever pa.s.sed this man without a second look. His clean-shaven face, the ma.s.sive chiselled features, his grim eagle look, and cold, colourless eyes, with the frosts of his native Vermont sparkling in their depths, compelled attention.
His walk was a painful hobble. He was lame in both feet, and one of them was deformed. The left leg ended in a mere bunch of flesh, resembling more closely an elephant"s hoof than the foot of a man.
He was absolutely bald, and wore a heavy brown wig that seemed too small to reach the edge of his enormous forehead.
He rarely visited the White House. He was the able, bold, unscrupulous leader of leaders, and men came to see him. He rarely smiled, and when he did it was the smile of the cynic and misanthrope. His tongue had the lash of a scorpion. He was a greater terror to the trimmers and time-servers of his own party than to his political foes. He had hated the President with sullen, consistent, and unyielding venom from his first nomination at Chicago down to the last rumour of his new proclamation.
In temperament a fanatic, in impulse a born revolutionist, the word conservatism was to him as a red rag to a bull. The first clash of arms was music to his soul. He laughed at the call for 75,000 volunteers, and demanded the immediate equipment of an army of a million men. He saw it grow to 2,000,000. From the first, his eagle eye had seen the end and all the long, blood-marked way between. And from the first, he began to plot the most cruel and awful vengeance in human history.
And now his time had come.
The giant figure in the White House alone had dared to brook his anger and block the way; for old Stoneman was the Congress of the United States. The opposition was too weak even for his contempt. Cool, deliberate, and venomous alike in victory or defeat, the fascination of his positive faith and revolutionary programme had drawn the rank and file of his party in Congress to him as charmed satellites.
The President greeted him cordially, and with his habitual deference to age and physical infirmity hastened to place for him an easy chair near his desk.
He was breathing heavily and evidently labouring under great emotion. He brought his cane to the floor with violence, placed both hands on its crook, leaned his ma.s.sive jaws on his hands for a moment, and then said:
"Mr. President, I have not annoyed you with many requests during the past four years, nor am I here to-day to ask any favours. I have come to warn you that, in the course you have mapped out, the executive and legislative branches have come to the parting of the ways, and that your encroachments on the functions of Congress will be tolerated, now that the Rebellion is crushed, not for a single moment!"
Mr. Lincoln listened with dignity, and a ripple of fun played about his eyes as he looked at his grim visitor. The two men were face to face at last--the two men above all others who had built and were to build the foundations of the New Nation--Lincoln"s in love and wisdom to endure forever, the Great Commoner"s in hate and madness, to bear its harvest of tragedy and death for generations yet unborn.
"Well, now, Stoneman," began the good-humoured voice, "that puts me in mind----"
The old Commoner lifted his hand with a gesture of angry impatience:
"Save your fables for fools. Is it true that you have prepared a proclamation restoring the conquered province of North Carolina to its place as a State in the Union with no provision for negro suffrage or the exile and disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of its rebels?"
The President rose and walked back and forth with his hands folded behind him before answering.
"I have. The Const.i.tution grants to the National Government no power to regulate suffrage, and makes no provision for the control of "conquered provinces.""
"Const.i.tution!" thundered Stoneman. "I have a hundred const.i.tutions in the pigeonholes of my desk!"
"I have sworn to support but one."
"A worn-out rag----"
"Rag or silk, I"ve sworn to execute it, and I"ll do it, so help me G.o.d!"
said the quiet voice.
"You"ve been doing it for the past four years, haven"t you!" sneered the Commoner. "What right had you under the Const.i.tution to declare war against a "sovereign" State? To invade one for coercion? To blockade a port? To declare slaves free? To suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_? To create the State of West Virginia by the consent of two states, one of which was dead, and the other one of which lived in Ohio? By what authority have you appointed military governors in the "sovereign" States of Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana? Why trim the hedge and lie about it? We, too, are revolutionists, and you are our executive. The Const.i.tution sustained and protected slavery. It _was_ "a league with death and a covenant with h.e.l.l," and our flag "a polluted rag!""
"In the stress of war," said the President, with a far-away look, "it was necessary that I do things as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy to save the Union which I have no right to do now that the Union is saved and its Const.i.tution preserved. My first duty is to re-establish the Const.i.tution as our supreme law over every inch of our soil."
"The Const.i.tution be d----d!" hissed the old man. "It was the creation, both in letter and spirit, of the slaveholders of the South."
"Then the world is their debtor, and their work is a monument of imperishable glory to them and to their children. I have sworn to preserve it!"
"We have outgrown the swaddling clothes of a babe. We will make new const.i.tutions!"
""Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,"" softly spoke the tall, self-contained man.
For the first time the old leader winced. He had long ago exhausted the vocabulary of contempt on the President, his character, ability, and policy. He felt as a shock the first impression of supreme authority with which he spoke. The man he had despised had grown into the great constructive statesman who would dispute with him every inch of ground in the attainment of his sinister life purpose.
His hatred grew more intense as he realized the prestige and power with which he was clothed by his mighty office.
With an effort he restrained his anger, and a.s.sumed an argumentative tone.
"Can"t you see that your so-called States are now but conquered provinces?
That North Carolina and other waste territories of the United States are unfit to a.s.sociate with civilized communities?"
"We fought no war of conquest," quietly urged the President, "but one of self-preservation as an indissoluble Union. No State ever got out of it, by the grace of G.o.d and the power of our arms. Now that we have won, and established for all time its unity, shall we stultify ourselves by declaring we were wrong? These States must be immediately restored to their rights, or we shall betray the blood we have shed. There are no "conquered provinces" for us to spoil. A nation cannot make conquest of its own territory."
"But we are acting outside the Const.i.tution," interrupted Stoneman.
"Congress has no existence outside the Const.i.tution," was the quick answer.
The old Commoner scowled, and his beetling brows hid for a moment his eyes. His keen intellect was catching its first glimpse of the intellectual grandeur of the man with whom he was grappling. The facility with which he could see all sides of a question, and the vivid imagination which lit his mental processes, were a revelation. We always underestimate the men we despise.
"Why not out with it?" cried Stoneman, suddenly changing his tack. "You are determined to oppose negro suffrage?"
"I have suggested to Governor Hahn of Louisiana to consider the policy of admitting the more intelligent and those who served in the war. It is only a suggestion. The State alone has the power to confer the ballot."
"But the truth is this little "suggestion" of yours is only a bone thrown to radical dogs to satisfy our howlings for the moment! In your soul of souls you don"t believe in the equality of man if the man under comparison be a negro?"
"I believe that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which will forever forbid their living together on terms of political and social equality. If such be attempted, one must go to the wall."
"Very well, pin the Southern white man to the wall. Our party and the Nation will then be safe."
"That is to say, destroy African slavery and establish white slavery under negro masters! That would be progress with a vengeance."
A grim smile twitched the old man"s lips as he said:
"Yes, your prim conservative sn.o.bs and male waiting-maids in Congress went into hysterics when I armed the negroes. Yet the heavens have not fallen."
"True. Yet no more insane blunder could now be made than any further attempt to use these negro troops. There can be no such thing as restoring this Union to its basis of fraternal peace with armed negroes, wearing the uniform of this Nation, tramping over the South, and rousing the basest pa.s.sions of the freedmen and their former masters. General Butler, their old commander, is now making plans for their removal, at my request. He expects to dig the Panama Ca.n.a.l with these black troops."
"Fine scheme that--on a par with your messages to Congress asking for the colonization of the whole negro race!"
"It will come to that ultimately," said the President firmly. "The negro has cost us $5,000,000,000, the desolation of ten great States, and rivers of blood. We can well afford a few million dollars more to effect a permanent settlement of the issue. This is the only policy on which Seward and I have differed----"
"Then Seward was not an utterly hopeless fool. I"m glad to hear something to his credit," growled the old Commoner.
"I have urged the colonization of the negroes, and I shall continue until it is accomplished. My emanc.i.p.ation proclamation was linked with this plan. Thousands of them have lived in the North for a hundred years, yet not one is the pastor of a white church, a judge, a governor, a mayor, or a college president. There is no room for two distinct races of white men in America, much less for two distinct races of whites and blacks. We can have no inferior servile cla.s.s, peon or peasant. We must a.s.similate or expel. The American is a citizen king or nothing. I can conceive of no greater calamity than the a.s.similation of the negro into our social and political life as our equal. A mulatto citizenship would be too dear a price to pay even for emanc.i.p.ation."